Most of the LHC analyses are devoted to “searches";
hundreds of papers report studies aimed at verifying if the LHC data
agree with hypotheses put forward by theory models.
Such analyses give the primary role to the theory,
which makes predictions based on calculations with different levels of accuracy and/or precision:
some calculations are performed under assumptions that often incorporate approximations
and only up to a given fixed order in a perturbative series.
In the case of heavy quarkonium production,
non-relativistic quantum chromodynamics (NRQCD) [1]} is the commonly-considered standard theory,
to be probed by experimental analyses.
This model is, indeed, the most sophisticated, complex, and conceptually profound presently available
in this chapter of physics.
It is however also true that the level of NRQCD calculations is not yet sufficiently satisfactory,
and new improvements are
continuously taking place.
The absence of a reliable “standard model" is not, in itself, a problem,
as long as we are aware of the transient nature of the calculations.
Indeed, when experimental measurements are fitted (a suited word) within a given theoretical framework,
we might be placing the data in a tight corset that moulds the patterns into desired shapes,
preventing us from exploring a richer spectrum of options and, worse,
potentially blinding us from the simplest and most natural interpretations.
